The new Netflix Original Cooked is just the latest truly great entry to the streaming service’s brilliant documentary catalogue and it doubles as an indisputable declaration that Netflix wants to be the home of the best “cooking shows” in the world.

The four-part docu-series is an adaptation of Michael Pollan‘s best-selling book of the same title. Foodies and bibliophiles alike will know Pollan as the man behind The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Cooked was the author’s exploration into how humans are one of the only – if not the only — creatures on Earth who prepare their food before eating it.

Like Netflix’s Chef’s Table, Cooked is a spellbinding look at the intersections between food, culture, and our personal experiences. While Chef’s Table examined these issues through the lens of one ground-breaking culinary mastermind per episode, Cooked is tackling a much larger picture. Each of the four episodes focuses on one of the four elements — Earth, Air, Fire & Water — and how it influences how we cook food. More importantly, Pollan is leading a charge to show the inexorable link between cooking and culture, food and health, science and emotion, humanity and what nourishes us. It’s in equal measures inspiring, informative, and haunting.

Cooked has an intimate and introspective tone to it that’s glorious to behold. Just as time, thought, and care goes into all of the dishes on display, the series itself has a careful and deliberate pace. Each episode has a different director and each presents a variety of narratives that fold in on each other and around one another to reveal how each tiny part of the puzzle makes up the larger picture. In “Air,” for instance, the focus is all about bread. We start by watching how a Moroccan mother starts her day kneading a loaf and learn how the history of bread echoes the tumultuous evolution of the Fertile Crescent. Pollan himself opens up about how daunted he was to tackle the science of the stuff. The development of bread is the development of civilization and as time has gone on, cultural industrialization and climate change has threatened to diminish bread’s nutritional value. We visit a modern lab, meet a traditional farmer, and go deep into the science of yeast and fermentation. What it all shakes out to is the truth that humanity has a deep interdependence with the food we eat.

The contrast between Cooked and the high-octane reality cooking show programming on the Food Network is the same as the difference between a slowly rising sourdough loaf and Wonder Bread. Cooked doesn’t want us to watch other people cooking. Instead, the series wants to seduce us back into the kitchen. Pollan’s thesis isn’t just that home cooked meals are better for us and more nutritious, but they are more emotionally enriching. Inversely, the recipes that we inherit from our grandparents don’t just keep their memories alive, but the secret building blocks of our civilization.

Overall, Netflix’s diverse original programming slate seems to want to offer a little bit of everything so that there’s something to appeal to everyone. With Cooked, though, Netflix is firmly asserting itself as the home of prestigious cooking shows. The show joins the likes of other Netflix Originals like Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret and the aforementioned Chef’s Table as a call to action for viewers. Food is more than what we eat to survive. It is a way we communicate with each other and with nature. Netflix’s choice to promote politically-minded and intellectually stimulating foodie fare shows that it wants to push viewers to change their minds about the ways they eat. Netflix wants everyone off the couch and in the kitchen, making natural foods that will enrich our lives way more than a House of Cards marathon ever could.